“Let me sign first,” said Wanda, “your hand is trembling, are you
afraid of the happiness that is to be yours?”
She took the agreement and pen. While engaging in my internal struggle,
I looked upward for a moment. It occurred to me that the painting on
the ceiling, like many of those of the Italian and Dutch schools, was
utterly unhistorical, but this very fact gave it a strange mood which
had an almost uncanny effect on me. Delilah, an opulent woman with
flaming red hair, lay extended, half-disrobed, in a dark fur-cloak,
upon a red ottoman, and bent smiling over Samson who had been
overthrown and bound by the Philistines. Her smile in its mocking
coquetry was full of a diabolical cruelty; her eyes, half-closed, met
Samson’s, and his with a last look of insane passion cling to hers, for
already one of his enemies is kneeling on his breast with the red-hot
iron to blind him.
“Now—” said Wanda. “Why you are all lost in thought. What is the matter
with you, everything will remain just as it was, even after you have
signed, don’t you know me yet, dear heart?”
I looked at the agreement. Her name was written there in bold letters.
I peered once more into her eyes with their potent magic, then I took
the pen and quickly signed the agreement.
“You are trembling,” said Wanda calmly, “shall I help you?”
She gently took hold of my hand, and my name appeared at the bottom of
the second paper. Wanda looked once more at the two documents, and then
locked them in the desk which stood at the head of the ottoman.
“Now then, give me your passport and money.”
I took out my wallet and handed it to her. She inspected it, nodded,
and put it with other things while in a sweet drunkenness I kneeled
before her leaning my head against her breast.
Suddenly she thrusts me away with her foot, leaps up, and pulls the
bell-rope. In answer to its sound three young, slender negresses enter;
they are as if carved of ebony, and are dressed from head to foot in
red satin; each one has a rope in her hand.
Suddenly I realize my position, and am about to rise. Wanda stands
proudly erect, her cold beautiful face with its sombre brows and
contemptous eyes is turned toward me. She stands before me as mistress,
commanding, gives a sign with her hand, and before I really know what
has happened to me the negresses have dragged me to the ground, and
have tied me hand and foot. As in the case of one about to be executed
my arms are bound behind my back, so that I can scarcely move.
“Give me the whip, Haydée,” commands Wanda, with unearthly calm.
The negress hands it to her mistress, kneeling.
“And now take off my heavy furs,” she continues, “they impede me.”
The negress obeyed.
“The jacket there!” Wanda commanded.
Haydée quickly brought her the _kazabaika_, set with ermine, which lay
on the bed, and Wanda slipped into it with two inimitably graceful
movements.
“Now tie him to the pillar here!”
The negresses lifted me up, and twisting a heavy rope around my body,
tied me standing against one of the massive pillars which supported the
top of the wide Italian bed.
Then they suddenly disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed them.
Wanda swiftly approached me. Her white satin dress flowed behind her in
a long train, like silver, like moonlight; her hair flared like flames
against the white fur of her jacket. Now she stood in front of me with
her left hand firmly planted on her hips, in her right hand she held
the whip. She uttered an abrupt laugh.
“Now play has come to an end between us,” she said with heartless
coldness. “Now we will begin in dead earnest. You fool, I laugh at you
and despise you; you who in your insane infatuation have given yourself
as a plaything to _me_, the frivolous and capricious woman. You are no
longer the man I love, but _my slave_, at my mercy even unto life and
death.
“You shall know me!
“First of all you shall have a taste of the whip in all seriousness,
without having done anything to deserve it, so that you may understand
what to expect, if you are awkward, disobedient, or refractory.”
With a wild grace she rolled back her fur-lined sleeve, and struck me
across the back.